I go to bed at night with numbered Treaties counted off like rosary beads

Sleep with my head to the East

Like my Grandmothers and Grandfathers would have

Pray for dreams for the people

For the people that Canada forgets to pray for

Pray that dawn breaks the mourning

Canada.

Coming up on one hundred and fifty years

I guess that makes you pretty old eh?

It explains your memory lapses

Don’t worry,

The daughters and sons of dishonoured treaties and unceded territories

will be here to remind you

Oh, did you already forget?

We are still here.

Post Poem: If this poem makes you aggravated and want to say nasty things. Check yourself. This is exactly why it is written. How can I be Canadian when I am constantly receiving messages to forget who I am as an Indigenous woman from Canadians? My memory of who I am enrages you so. Why is that? One sided history? Controlled media messages? “Special Privileges” a.k.a. fallacies perpetuated by uneducated minds – Indians never pay taxes etc.? Maybe if half of the Canadians didn’t still want me absorbed and assimilated into the general body we could see this poem not needed to be written “Why don’t those Indians just forget it already? Why do those Indians still live on reserves? Why don’t they…just get over it?”. Trust me. I’m tired of this bullshit too. But the kohkums are still cryin’ and the babies are still dyin’. The territory is still getting cleared, Canada still covers it’s ears.

5 comments

This poem doesn’t enrage me-it only makes me shake my head in frustration at the attitudes you criticize, the belief that you should “just get over it”, the fact that Art Manuel has been forced to repeat so many of the same things his father George did, the fact that Harold Cardinal wrote back in the 1960s that the Indian has been repeatedly asked what he wants, and constantly said, and then shouted it, over and over again.

I wonder how many of my own fellow non-Indigenous Canadians could have survived being forcibly dragged away from our homes, beaten for speaking English or French, told that our religions are a lie, targeted by perverts and sadists, constantly forced to vacate our homes and move because somebody else wanted the land, being denied access to food, movement, or even the ability to choose who we marry, so much power over our lives given to the whims of some unaccountable agent, forced to see our women be so disproportionately targeted for murder and sexual violence?

It’s as likely that we wouldn’t have survived it at all.

Loving and being proud of one’s country does not equal being blind to its very serious flaws, the violence and bigotry that stain its legacy. It is as Indigenous leaders like Cardinal and the Manuels have repeatedly said-recognizing these flaws, and addressing them, would benefit everyone, whatever their background. It would mean that Canada is that much further along to living up to its reputation-and what could be wrong with that?

Hi Helen – your work/word(s) – really powerful – would like to chat with you about speaking at a human rights conference in December in Vancouver/Richmond – unceded Coast Salish land. Please email me at hkarim@bcnu,org